I think that social media is the integral next step for travel companies. Travel is about the experience an individual has and sharing that experience with others. By opening up avenues of communication through social media a travel company only stands to enhance their traveler’s experience and create more positive word-of-mouth. It is only when a company is not transparent with their customers through social media that they fail. Great post

Nice to see that you mention Mr. and Mrs. Smith - they do have some great content and a great overall offering.

Personally, as a traveller and travel journalist, I rely less on things like Twitter and Digg and spend more time on blogs, which as you say has been slow to be adopted. And a travel company blog seems like a no brainer - an easy way to reguarly communicate with your customers about existing or new products and services.

I think the key is for travel companies to use social media tools in a way that adds value to consumers. Blogs allow greater transparency and a more personal discussion. Facebook apps or fan pages can provide effective communication channels without requiring massive incremental staff support. Podcasting is another app that I think will only grow in size, sophistication and importance (podcasts by HostelWorld and Lonely Planet come to mind.)

But I think there are other social tools that can risk distracting travel companies from their core business and deplete already time-starved resources. Adding a Digg / delicious / Stumble Upon button to blogs is great, but spending a large amount of time participating in their communities is tough to rationalize, at least at the present time. I think it comes down to prioritizing the communication challenges and goals of individual travel companies and then evaluating what channel best achieves them.

How does the old saying go - you have to spend money to make money? Or was it, you get what you pay for?

Thanks for the mention Darren.

The most common challenge that other travel brands (particularly the traditional brands) are facing in getting involved in social media seems to be buy-in from above… possibly due to a disconnect with the way the online environment is changing (Darren you note that they may not see the benefit) or out of fear over what their customers might say.

Given the current economic climate I’d expect investment in social media is going to be even harder to justify (rightly or wrongly) particularly as CEOs are going to want to see £ signs against every spend (and it’s not always easy to prove this with social media).

However, the reality is that by engaging with consumers in this way, by building the trust, by harnessing your ‘promoters’ and by mitigating your ‘detractors’ , customers should convert better… and this something you can attribute a very tangible financial return to (not that financial returns are the only reason to participate but that is the reality we live in).

There is a good case study published about Hayes and Jarvis who saw conversion rates double for customers who interacted with a Tripadvisor review on their website: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS177807+22-Jan-2008+PRN20080122.

If you add this to the customer loyalty you build and the product/service feedback you collect, it’s very hard to find a reason why you wouldn’t do it!

Also, have you checked out the Open Skies blog (http://blog.flyopenskies.com/)? I find it particularly interesting as they used the blog as a launchpad for the airline (and perhaps an opportunity for BA to dip their toe into blogging). BA also recently launched their social network site Metro Twins: http://www.metrotwin.com/. An interesting approach but not an obvious one for me.

Thoughts?

Thanks for that Tripadvisor info re Hayes and Jarvis Rob… very interesting… something I blogged about recently too: http://www.travelblather.com/2008/09/trip-advisor-reviews-on-tour-operator-websites.html

Impressed that you guys actually write your own blog… it takes time and commitment… is it working for you?

Hi Darren, I’m in complete agreement with you and the challenge is to educate those with the purse strings about the value investing social media creates. But in times like these every penny spent will be under scrutiny and it’s going to be tough justifying additional resource in an area that is still unfamiliar to many companies - particularly now as focus increases on results in the short-term. When the likes of Lehmann Brothers go under, even survival cannot be taken for granted! (sorry if that sounds a bit gloomy - my personal belief is that the current climate actually justifies investing in social media now more than ever!)

As for the travel blogcamp, I am near London although it’s not great timing as that is my last week in the office before I head off on sabbatical to go travelling for 4 months! It does sound great though and I’d love to check it out if I can. Is the information on this link still valid?: http://www.travel-rants.com/travel-blogcamp-registration/

Jeremy - thanks! As Darren and yourself point out it does take a fair amount of commitment but we’re very pleased with how it’s working for us. It can be easy to feel disconnected from your customers when you’re working out of a head office so I feel quite privileged that I get to interact with our customers in this way!

As an online travel services company (worldnomads.com) , all our customers are already comfortable using web based services and social media is just another extension of this. As a bunch of technology geeks ourselves, the staff are hang out on social media sites too. So in many ways for us, it’s been a natural transition into social media.
Our founder is a mad-keen photographer - he started our flickr group out of a desire to share his travel pix. Our marketing manager is addicted to YouTube - he happily started our YouTube channel. These were easy ways of adding value to the community, but other sites have been harder…
Facebook is where the majority of our community hang-out and share stuff, so we set up a group there, and are beginning to be of some use to the members. And finally Twitter… such a mystery to start with, but it’s beginning to make sense now - especially as a way to keep people up to date with some of our program announcements and other great travel related stuff that we stumble across on the web. The key benefit is how quick it is to broadcast something. Sometimes a much better forum than our occasional email newsletters.

However… the big issue for us is that on social networks, people actively seek word of mouth recommendations. As we provide Travel Insurance cover, we are bound by Financial Services regulations that *prevent* us providing recommendations. Additionally, i think our customers’ expectations will be that we can provide customer service in those environments too - that’s a huge challenge for training the call-centre staff in the ways of web 2.0, the pace of new technologies … and staying legal. Having said all that - it’s a challenge worth undertaking!

Hi Darren,

Thanks so much for recognising the effort we’ve put into our blog. We’ve been working very hard on it since we launched it early this year, and have tried to as varied and interesting content as possible (and thank you, Andy, for your kind comments!).

The issue that we’ve been considering is that, while blogging and social networking are fantastic when it comes to establishing transparency and an open dialogue with customers and consumers, I’m not sure if all that many consumers are actually choosing to communicate with travel companies in that way yet. The challenge is therefore to work out how to encourage more of your customers to engage with you via social networks, once the tools to do so are in place. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

@Rob, I think you’re right – the advantages of blogging don’t relay themselves clearly to the company balance sheet because the effects are so hard to measure. I’d be interested to know how other companies measure the relative ‘success’ of their social networking projects, if it doesn’t readily translate to the bottom line.

For Smith we have never looked at our travel blog as a way of generating money, but as a way of engaging customers and providing us with an extra voice and channel for our rich content.

Auto Europe launched a blog this year. I’m part of a team that updates it on a weekly basis with articles created to show that we are specialists in our field, and can be trusted by our customers. I’d be interested in anyone’s advice on how to generate more interaction, as we’d love to receive more comments.

I agree with you Tamara on your first point. My hunch is that the greater change in behaviour will come mostly from a natural growth (rather than something we can influence) as more and more users start to see the value in seeking and interacting on blogs and social media. I have to say though, that some mainstream media sites are doing a really good job at integrating social media and introducing the likes of blogs to the masses. I’m thinking of the BBC in particular. We just need to see more social media in the context of travel so it starts to become the norm in our sector.

I would also say that, in the short-term, you can simply increase the visibility of your blog so it is more accessible, but I think (in my inexperienced opinion!) that you’ve already done a great job on this, particularly in integrating it on to your website. You also mention social networks. Have you set up a presence on Facebook or any other network? If so, I’d love to know what success you’ve had with it.

As for measuring social media… we launched our blog for similar reasons but 18 months on, like everything else we do, we are being challenged to prove that the blog is making a difference (whether that is short-term or long-term).

I’ve been thinking of ways to do this and one hypothesis is that a potential customer who visits and interacts with the blog is more likely to convert (i.e. quote to book) than a customer who doesn’t - because they are more engaged and trust the brand due to the the dialogue that has been developed. Our commercial site already had tracking tags embedded to measure the effectiveness of our online advertising campaigns so all we had to do was embed a tracking tag on the blog. The results we’ve seen are very interesting (and you can assign a financial value to this which is even better!).

Another thing we’re looking at is running a simple survey to look at whether the blog has made a positive (or negative) impression (which you might find relevant to your blog). We’ve also looked at the number of innovations that we’ve implemented as a result of feedback from the blog and the value these have created.

Finally, you might also want to look at some social media monitoring tools (if you haven’t already). There are tools that can measure things like sentiment, reach and influence of comments made about your brand across web including your blog.

I’m sure the metrics we are looking at aren’t all completely relevant to you but it might give you something to think about.

Sorry if my response is all a bit Marketing heavy by the way (and very long!). I’m really passionate about brands investing in social media and I think it’s absolutely the right thing to do (for so many reasons). But when I was being schooled on Marketing, the hot topic at the time was that, if Marketing is to have presence and influence at board level, it needed to start being made accountable for it’s investment and prove the value it creates. I think the same is going to be expected of investments in social media and I’m really keen to find ways to do this.

PS - I’m loving your blog by the way, Tamara. I’ve just entertained myself by reading the post about making cider in Herefordshire. Highly amusing (I love the tone!) and some great commentary from your readers.

@ Rob - what company do you work for?
Great comment - thank you. I agree with you completely. I also come from the old school of marketing and try and keep everything measurable if I can. But there are also lots of times when we haven’t been able to do this with our brand in particular. When we started Smith we decided create reviews and content that people could trust. This is expensive to do and something that, if we had been applying the strictly measurable marketing tools we would never have got away with. I’d be really interested to know what the measurement tools you were talking about are…
We have recently implemented Omniture so we be able to track the blog users through to booking. Can’t wait to get stuck into the stats!

@ Darren - you are right - one of the great things about the blog is that it brings us customers via search that would never have landed on the main website. One of our most popular posts recently was about wedding cakes!!!

Sorry - forgot to say - we have considered Facebook but want to do something that will stand out and also last rather than be gimmicky. Any ideas gratefully received.

Hi Darren -

A while ago we were considering whether to launch an application on Facebook or merely a fan page. After seeing the high volume of travel applications of many shapes and sizes (and assessing the cost benefit of devoting resources to a 3rd party rather than to our own site), we opted to set up a fan page instead.

Overall we’ve been pleased with how it has performed to date and the modest impact it has had on traffic referral and newsletter signups. The ongoing management of the page isn’t a time drain, yet we’re able to open a new communication path with our readers and integrate our blog RSS, photo albums and message boards to create greater engagement with our brand.

If you’re interested in viewing our page, here you go — http://www.facebook.com/pages/EuroCheapocom/23113361720?ref=ts

@ Darren - thanks for the info, great tool! I think it would good to use internally as well (another area were perhaps social media is underutilised).

Yes there are challenges with running a company blog although I do feel very privileged that I get to work on a programme like this! I should note it’s absolutely not all about revenue with Avis although we are being challenged with how we measure it (and rightly so I think). I’m speaking more from my experience speaking to my peers at other brands in the industry, who would love to launch a blog but are having trouble getting the buy-in from above.

On your question about consultancy, from my experience there is a certainly a need for this. We seeked a lot of advice before launching our blog (and I still do) as we were anxious about the potential mistakes that could be made that would be damaging to our brand (and I’ve read some real horror stories!). Problem is there are not a lot of experts in this area out there so you’ve got a bit of a head start!

@ Tamara - I work for Avis. Great call implementing Omniture tags. That will be interesting! It just so happens that we’re currently reviewing our supplier for measuring commentary on social media so I’ve got a pretty good view of what’s on offer. Happy to share this with you if you are interested. Not sure what the best way to get in touch is?

Back @ Darren, not sure this is a service you normally offer but happy for you to share my email address with Tamara if she is interested in getting in touch

Ah yes the permalinks. We tried sorting that out earlier in the year using re-directs so that any existing links into our old blog posts would not be broken (if that makes sense!). However, it all went a bit wrong and I haven’t had time to re-visit it yet (but thanks for reminding!).

Hmmm… I see your challenge. But I reckon that there are a lot of digital marketing agencies out there who have a client or two expressing an interest in social media. The agency will want this business but they don’t have the expertise in-house. They could recruit a specialist but they don’t have enough clients interested to justify the cost of a permanent head so they’ll enlist the help of a consultant. I suggest this as route because our agency listed the help of a consultant when we first took the dive and I suspect she was in a similar boat to you.

You might find it a bit more productive going via an agency rather than direct to the client. You’ve built up a great network on here, do you have much interaction from agencies that you can speak to? The agency we work on social media has some good contacts and I’d be happy to pass your name on. It might not come to anything but if you get a dialogue going with enough agencies then something is bound to turn up. And once you get a few clients in your portfolio you’ll be laughing!! (of course these things are always easier said than done!!)

Darren - yes please put me in touch with Rob.
Good luck with the consultancy - I definitely think it’s less important to have had the ‘consultancy experience’ than the real life experience of doing it yourself. You run a successful blog and manage communications across all types of social media - what more could anyone want from a consultant?